Reply To: D&D officially turning Forgotten Realms sights away from Euro inspired campaigns

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In terms of equipment I don’t know whether there’s rules for Katana’s in the basic rulebook however in terms of the abstract combat mecahnics in D&D, katana’s and longswords are fairly similar in everything except form.  They both performed the same role and, ignoring discussions about which one may be superior, in reality they both weighed about the same, they both has a cutting edge and a thrusting point, were of similar length and could be wielded 1 or 2 handed.  The longsword could be argued to have superior defense in reality because of the cruciform hilt, however D&D does not confer any defence benefit for the longsword and so what we are left with is two cutting blades of similar size and weight so in D&D terms there is no real reason why the Katana should actually be any different to the longsword.  It is a medium sized slashing sword.  I know that in 3rd Edition the Katana actually used to do more damage but I don’t think there’s any real justification for this other than the lazy “Katana good, long sword bad” mentality.  In terms of quality, there were ranges of quality across both longswords and katanas depending on the wealth of the owners, D&D also has (or at least used to have) weapon qualities built into the game if you really want to go down that route, personally I have always found it just a little too much detail for my tastes.  We should also probably assume that, although historically Japan didn’t have access to the same quality of Iron Ore that was available to medieval Europe that this may not necessarily be true in a fantasy campaign setting.

So in what way is a Samurai really any different to knight?  They’re just a fighter with oriental equipment.

I also don’t think Ninja’s are any different to Rogues – or rather I think that they fall within the parent class of Rogue in that they’re a subtype of it.  First, to clarify, I think it’s probably best to use the Hollywood definition of a Ninja rather than historical because in a historical sense they were pretty much spies and could be found in many different guises – most of them non-combatant.  However let’s face it if someone plays a Ninja they don’t want to be playing a merchant who is feeding information back to a feudal lord, they want to play the masked, acrobatic assassin type and that’s really what I am focusing on.  So when you say “And of course Ninja were mostly spies and infiltrators who fought only when they had to and they were also experts of survival”, we could make that character using a Rogue.  As a Rogue you can build an urban, stealthy infiltrator type or you could play a different game and look at wilderness survival skills.  In both cases you can focus on light armour and load up with light melee and throwing weapons or maybe a light crossbow.  You could even take a very different approach and use the Monk as the basis for your character – you might not get the assassin skills but you can still go for some stealth, light weapons and give yourself a more direct approach to combat

I think D&D actually has more than enough flexibility built in to build whatever archetype you desire without having to create new classes and this has, in my opinion, been the case since 3rd Edition (AD&D 2nd Edition was a lot more restrictive).  New classes should really bring something to the game that might not be otherwise possible without multiclassing – things like the Arcane Trickster or Eldritch Knight.   In fact, if you wanted a more magical/fantasy version of a Ninja the Arcane Trickster class would probably be a really good starting point.